FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img installer changes contents of USB flash drive

[Ian Smith]

On Mon, 3 Oct 2016 17:00:25 -0600, Warren Block wrote:
 > On Tue, 4 Oct 2016, Ian Smith wrote:
 > 
 > > > I'd think you could just dd(1) the contents of the single installer disk
 > > > partition into a big-enough MBR partition.  Repeat for each image, then
 > > > use boot0cfg.
 > > 
 > > Sure, for old-style raw BSD images, but that won't work for images with:
 > > 1) PMBR, 2) primary GPT, 3) efifat partition, 4) gptboot partition then
 > > 5) the UFS partition - which is all we want to copy to a bootable BSD
 > > slice - then 6) 1M(??) swap.  We need to use /boot/boot bootblocks for
 > > each slice; still, it may be easy to locate and dd just that partition
 > > out of the mdconfig'd image - or mount it and copy; some tests needed.
 > 
 > What is the difficulty?  1-4 are not needed for an MBR disk anyway. The UFS
 > partition is the same either way, and gpart can install the bootcode that
 > lives in the start of a UFS filesystem also.

You're right, I'm probably over-thinking it.  Any moment now 11.0 will 
be out and I'll grab a memstick.img and dvd1.iso and play till it goes, 
though I expect to hold my own upgrades to 10.3 for the time being.

 > It would be easier to not use boot0, which is not very powerful. Syslinux or
 > Grub can multiboot with a lot more options, although you do need to make room
 > for them.

Of course you're right, but I think I can get by with 4 bootable images, 
and I'd prefer doing it all with native tools whenever possible.

Thanks for all your help,

Ian